Quentin Tarantino has always been a polarizing figure. To his defenders, he is a visionary, a revolutionary, a provocateur, a brilliant technician who makes explosively exciting films drawn from an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema history and who challenges both our expectations and our stereotypes; to his critics, he is ...

I take Rosa Luxemburg very seriously.Since feminism and class consciousness have been two of my passions my entire adult life, it's easy to see why I'm drawn to women who vocally espoused both, and Rosa Luxemburg is perhaps the greatest of them all. I've read her writings, studied her life, and held her up as an exemplar ...

With this week’s release of the long-delayed and possibly awaited conclusion to Secret Wars, Marvel wraps up it most pointless event comic ever and finally prepares fans for the all-new, all-different NEW Marvel Universe. No, not that one. No, not that one either. This is the NEW new new new universe (not to be conf ...

Nothing gives you a more bracing sensation of how crazily prolific Seijun Suzuki was during his most fertile period at Nikkatsu than the fact that Tokyo Drifter and Fighting Elegy -- two movies that are light-years apart in terms of tone, subject matter, and setting -- were both made in the same year. The Siskel Center ...

Our next installment of Seijunuary deals with what is likely Seijun Suzuki's best-known film, not so much because it's his greatest work, but because, for a lot of his famous fans, it was the first one they ever saw. Tokyo Drifter was one of the earliest Suzuki films to get a stateside release in a variety of formats (VHS ...

Fuck if I'm going to wait until I'm on my deathbed to let Esquire ask me for valuable life lessons. Here's some balls-to-ass wisdom from my 46 years, kids -- take it to heart and warn me if you mourn me.***"There is no more precious love in this world than a man has for his child. Or someone's child, anyway. It doesn't ma ...

From time to time, this website offers a current events quiz feature, so that our readers may feel au courant in these confusing times. Herewith, our January 2016 edition.1. The Powerball lottery prize this week was a world's record $1.5 billion. Who won this colossal prize?(a) A young couple from Omaha, Nebraska, ...

I am, to put it mildly, extremely distrustful of reality shows, especially of the competitive variety. Leaving aside the fact that, due to behind-the-scenes staging and manipulation, they rarely qualify as either 'reality' or 'competition', they also tend to have the nastiest hallmarks of unscripted television: pandering to ...

The second entry in our month of films by eccentric Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki (who, at 92 and beset by health problems, keeps on keeping on and has just recently lensed a documentary and appeared in a new television commercial, a profitable sideline for which he is arguably better known in his homeland than for his d ...

Well, the news in this corner of the world -- a world that seems less strange and charming without David Bowie in it -- is the same as it is all over. He had one last shock in him, and he kept us guessing until the end; I wish like anything it hadn't happened, but there's something so fitting about the way he went out. Ther ...

Sex crimes are awful things.This should go without saying, but my point is that, beyond being awful on their face, they keep being awful long after they've happened; they can leave a victim traumatized for the rest of their lives, not only because of the acts themselves, but because of the way the people targeted by them ar ...

With the Gene Siskel center hosting a traveling road show of films by Japanese director Seijun Suzuki, I figured this would be a good month to recap some of his most striking films.And 'striking' is the right word. Suzuki has an incredible eye, and while his movies generally are skin-deep, he photographs that skin with a ...

It's New Year's Day. For millions of people, it is a day of resolutions: of promises to one's self or one's loved ones to be healthy, to meet new goals, to expand one's understanding of the world. Many will make today the day they dedicate themselves to becoming better spouses, better parents, better people. It is ...